Definitely a Little Drunk
by Nubial Sheep
Summary: An alternate ending for Alice Munro's story "Runaway". Instead of getting on the two o'clock bus for Toronto, Carla gets drunk and stays the night at Sylvia's house. Oneshot. Contains lesbians/femslash/yuri.


A Little Drunk

Summary: An alternate ending to Alice Munroe's story _Runaway._ Carla never got on the bus to Toronto after visiting her neighbor, Sylvia Jamieson. Instead, she stayed the night. Oneshot. Lesbians/Femslash.

_This fic was originally inspired by an assignment in my Literature class, where we had to rewrite the ending to this short story. Which was an awesome assignment, because I'm a fanfiction writer, and I rewrite stories for fun all the time! Now I didn't have enough time during the half-hour allotted to write a satisfactory fic, but I got a good start and wrote this as soon as I got my hands on a computer. I had a blast writing this (assigned fanfiction is great) and it's my first femslash too!_

Recap of the original Story (Warning: SPOILERS, if you care)

Clark and Carla are a young married couple who own land and horses and live in a trailer home. Their relationship isn't doing too great, since Clark is domineering, violent, sadistic and childish, while Carla is submissive and is constantly being victimized and verbally abused by Clark. Both of them are emotionally unstable; Clark has sudden bursts of temper, and Carla cries all the time. Both are unhappy, but Carla especially so, since Clark has been growing more and more unstable. Also, Carla's one source of comfort, her goat Flora, has disappeared, and is nowhere to be found.

Sylvia Jamieson is a slightly older woman, and their neighbor. Her husband died several months ago after a very long illness, and after his death Sylvia took a vacation to Greece. Now she has returned, and is working on setting her life straight. She has employed Carla to help her clean up her house and get rid of all of her husband's old things, such as the leftover cartons of sunflowers seeds that he used to eat. Sylvia is very obviously attracted to Carla, who is athletic, good-spirited and friendly. Sylvia dismisses her attraction as being "displaced motherly affection", since she never had any children.

One day, Carla comes to Sylvia's house and breaks down crying, explaining to Sylvia her situation at home and the way her husband has been acting towards her. Sylvia comforts her, and asks Carla what she wants to do about it. Carla tells her that she would run away to Toronto if she could, but she has no money and she can't go home. Sylvia offers to give Carla clothes, and money, to get her on a bus heading to Toronto and to even set up lodging for her with a contact she has in the area. Carla is grateful, and while waiting for the bus, Carla showers and changes her clothes, Sylvia admires the sight of wet, flushed Carla, and the two of them have some wine and talk.

This point is where my story begins.

In the original story, Carla has Sylvia put a good-bye note in Clark's mailbox, gets on the bus headed for Toronto, and Sylvia goes back home. Carla, however, finds herself unable to go through with her plans, she cannot go through living a life alone, and without Clark. She is afraid, and gets off the bus and goes back to Clark, despite everything.

Later that night, Sylvia is awoken by a knocking on her door; it is Clark, coming to return the clothes that Carla borrowed. He threatens Sylvia to stay away from his wife. Suddenly, out of the fog bursts an indistinct white shape, scaring the dickens out of Sylvia and Clark. The shape is actually Flora the goat, who trots up to nuzzle Clark. A bit dazed, he takes the goat home with him.

Later, Carla opens a letter from Sylvia, in which Sylvia apologizes for trying to force her to do something she may not have really wanted, and describes the miraculous scene of Flora's reappearance, saying she is glad Carla has her companion again. Carla burns up the letter and flushes the ashes down the loo, because in actuality, she never knew that Flora had been found. She tries to hide it from herself, but she just found a skeleton in the forest which looked suspiciously like a goat's, but she doesn't want to confront Clark, or believe that he could have done it. So, in the end, she is back where she started, but even unhappier, since she might never see Flora again.

_And now that the context has been taken care of, on with the main event!_

* * *

Sylvia was definitely a little drunk.

Well, maybe more than a little, to have lost track of the time so completely.

But even when Carla had finished talking about her parents, she had not stopped talking. She began to recount experiences from her times in school, bellyaching about her controlling parents, and as the wine flowed the spirits of the two women had lifted considerably. Carla was once again smiling and joking with as little effort as she before, full of that ease and confidence that Sylvia had come to expect from her.

The tear-tracks running down Carla's freckled cheeks had long since dissipated into the air, and her hair, too, had shed most of that clinging moisture that had been left over from the shower, and now it fell, frizzy and loose once again, to frame her handsome face, curling down a little at her collarbone. Under the bright shafts of afternoon sun that glinted in their wine glasses and spun dappled patterns across the table cloth, Carla's hair shone like a crown around her head; looking as regal as a lion's mane and as wild as the tail of some wild stallion.

Maybe it was the sunlight, and maybe it was the wine, and quite probably it was both, but the two women felt themselves filling with a lazy warmth that loosened their reason and freed Carla's tongue to wander wherever it may, her words flying by at a galloping pace, leaping high with laughter and then growing low and soft so as to whisper some gossipy secret or a silly joke.

And Sylvia was content to listen to her speak, and watch the fluid movements of her hands, and let their plans fall into the back of her mind. Even when she realized, some hours later, that the sun was sinking in the sky, and that the bus to Toronto had long since left, she didn't mind. Carla could stay the night here and catch the next bus, the eight o'clock, in the morning.

Everything could still work out.

But something was happening; the wine had loosened something inside of the older woman that had not been so freed since her school days, since before she had met Leon.

The presence of Carla, of her infectious spirit, of the way her teeth flashed jovially when she smiled, also worked to loosen this internal part. It was like some tight, obscure little bud growing inside her had suddenly unfurled its petals from their constriction and burst into glorious bloom.

So they joked and laughed and drank, the pair of them, late into the night, until they were both too drunk and too tired to do anything more than drag themselves upstairs and collapse onto the bed, still fully clothed.

This was the first time that Sylvia had laid in that bed since before Leon had become ill. This was the bed they had slept in together, husband and wife, and was the bed he had died in; but Sylvia was too lightheaded, too dizzy and was enjoying herself far too much to think about that.

All she could think about now was Carla, lying in his old spot, limbs splayed out brazenly across the blue patterned bedspread, clothes rumpled and hair in disarray, face flushed from the wine; she made such a comical picture that Sylvia couldn't help but laugh, and her laughter made Carla laugh, and neither could stop once they had begun. The laughter bubbled up from inside them like champagne, and they both lay there for some time, laughing together in the moonlit darkness of the room, breathing hard as if they had just run a great distance.

Then when Carla wriggled across the bed, innocent as a new-born colt, to press a sloppy kiss to Sylvia's mouth, it may have meant _Thank you_ or maybe something else, Sylvia didn't know; but, as an aching warmth blossomed in her gullet, and a heat spread out to her limbs that may or may not have been from the wine, Sylvia returned it.

Carla's breath tasted like alcohol, and the flesh of her lips under Sylvia's were as hot as flame. There must have been a storm approaching, because Sylvia felt that moment that the air was charged with electricity, and when she closed her eyes, she could faintly smell the lingering scent of ozone, damp hay and apple-scented soap.

Then Carla's firm, graceful arms locked around her and Sylvia twined her fingers through those fine hairs sprouting from the back of Carla's neck and it was heady and new, and as pleasure blossomed forth inside her conscious thought was discarded as easily as so many old photos.

Sylvia felt her years drop away until she was a schoolgirl again, young and reckless and carefree, so ignorant of loneliness, of death and funeral preparations and cartons full of uneaten sesame seeds, blind to everything but that brilliant smile and those broad shoulders and the motion of those strong, smooth hands. The two of them were running together, and it was desperate and maybe a little crazy, but all they could do was run and run and never look back.

Yes, they were definitely a little drunk.

_______________________________________________

When Sylvia woke the next morning, it was to a cold, empty bed and a pounding headache.

She rose slowly, treading gingerly, to check inside the bathroom. Maybe Carla had gone to wash up. A stone sank into the pit of Sylvia's stomach as she looked in to find it uninhabited and undisturbed. Turning back to the bedroom, she spotted a small pile of clothes on the far corner of the bed.

Upon approaching, she recognized them as the clothes she had given to Carla that evening, all folded neatly and stacked together, with the cream-colored silk of the shirt peeking out from under the rough fabric of the jacket. It was a great difference from the condition in which Sylvia had seen them last night, all thrown haphazardly to the floor every which-way.

For some reason, seeing them now made Sylvia's chest constrict a little, as if her ribcage were clamping down over her lungs. She turned away from them, moving to the wardrobe to throw on an old, worn bathrobe before padding down the stairs to get herself some aspirin and a cup of herbal tea; she didn't feel hungry for breakfast quite yet.

She wandered through the house, going through the motions of her morning routine mechanically, feeling not quite awake and not quite aware of anything around her. All she could focus on were her hands, and keeping them in motion constantly, brewing tea and fetching a mug and stirring the hot beverage aimlessly, though she did not drink it. The only sound in the house was from the old clock ticking in the living room.

The house sounded as empty as it looked.

And then, Sylvia heard a sound coming from outside. As if in a dream, her feet led her to the door, and she stepped outside into the cool, wet air of the morning, and glided around to the side of the house.

And there, shining a dazzling white under the sunlight, was a white goat, as big as a sheepdog, which stood grazing there on the lawn. Once she had stepped into sight its head lifted, and it gazed at her with an expression of knowing, and a little sardonic mockery. It shook its ears as if flicking away an insect.

Then it moved forward suddenly, butting its head hard against Sylvia's knee, before running away from her, back into the forest and out of sight among the trees in a flicker of white.

And then... nothing.

If Sylvia had not still felt the throbbing pain in her knee, she would have thought she had dreamt the whole thing.

* * *

Since I suspect few people, if any will actually read this, being fanfiction for an obscure short story and all; if you are reading this, please please_ please_ review it, tell me if you liked it, hated it, thought it was confusing, etc. I love feedback, and even a sentence helps. And if you're lazy or busy and you want to show your appreciation without writing anything, favoriting it is also a nice gesture.

In fact, here's a special deal: for every reviewer and every favoriter, I will write a haiku or a limeric, whichever you prefer, expressing my gratitude. If you want, you can give me a topic to do it on.


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